Joe Biden vows to ‘defend every inch’ of Nato from Russian threat

Not just Ukraine at stake, but ‘freedom of democracies throughout the world’, says US president

Joe Biden promised eastern European leaders he would “defend literally every inch of Nato” and said Vladimir Putin had made a “big mistake” by suspending Russia’s participation in the last remaining nuclear arms treaty.

The US president was in Poland on Wednesday to reassure allies as Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine drags on towards a second year.

It came as Putin held a huge patriotic rally at a stadium in central Moscow to urge the public to get behind their armed forces fighting in Ukraine.

The Russian president has already announced he is suspending the 2010 New Start treaty that limits the number of Russian and US strategic nuclear warheads. His deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov went further on Wednesday, threatening “further countermeasures, if necessary”.

However, Mr Biden said that escalation was “a big mistake”.

He gave assurance to the Bucharest Nine – a collection of eastern Nato nations that came together in response to Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

“You’re the frontlines of our collective defence,” Biden told them. “And you know, better than anyone, what’s at stake in this conflict. Not just for Ukraine, but for the freedom of democracies throughout Europe and around the world.”

Russian flags are waved at the ‘Glory to the Defenders of the Fatherland’ concert for Vladimir Putin in Moscow (AP)

He pledged that Nato’s Article 5 mutual-defence rule is “sacred” and that “we will defend literally every inch of Nato”.

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said: “We don’t know when the war will end, but when it does, we need to ensure that history does not repeat itself.”

Pointing to past Russian actions in Georgia and Ukraine, he added: “We cannot allow Russia to continue to chip away at European security. We must break the cycle of Russian aggression.”

Biden has given particular attention to the support from Poland for Ukraine. Warsaw is hosting about 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees and has committed $3.8bn (£3.15bn) in military and economic assistance to Kyiv.

Vladimir Putin attends a concert for Russian service members in Moscow on Wednesday (Reuters)

“The truth of the matter is: the United States needs Poland and Nato as much as Nato needs the United States,” Biden said during talks with president Andrzej Duda.

In a joint statement after the meeting, the Bucharest Nine said they were committed to increasing Nato’s military presence on their territories to deter Moscow. “Russia is the most significant and direct threat to allied security,” they said.

The declaration was also signed by Hungary, whose prime minister Viktor Orban has often pushed back on EU sanctions on Russia and along with Turkey is the only Nato member still to ratify the accession applications of Sweden and Finland.